The prior art describes that a soft plastic or elastomeric shape may be used as a lure when securely attached to a fishing hook. These soft plastic or elastomeric shapes have come to be known as “soft baits”, partly because they may be compressed, stretched, and even broken in two with the force supplied by a user's hands. Soft baits are often colored and made into shapes similar to live baits used by fishermen. A popular and highly effective soft bait is one formed like a relatively long worm such as a night crawler. Other well known shapes of soft baits include a crawfish, insects, salamanders, small to mid size fish, as well as shapes that have no known analog to a live bait. It has been speculated that soft baits do not act like their live bait analogs when being drawn through the water to attract game fish. However, soft baits as they are drawn through the water do in fact attract game fish very well, even when many other baits and lures do not work at all.
Soft baits usually consist of a single soft and elastomeric material or polymer, typically a plastisol polyvinyl chloride. The soft and pliable nature of soft baits make them easy to lose or come loose in typical fishing situations. Carolina and Texas “riggin” or rigging are forms of setting a fishing hook in a soft bait. Generally, the object of these forms of rigging is to connect the soft bait to specific locations on the hook to maximize security (the tendency to stay connected to a hook) and obstacle shielding (avoiding hooking underwater weeds and branches). It is well known to introduce a fishing hook point in a soft bait and draw the hook through the soft bait until a part of the soft bait is located covering or near the hook's fishing line connector. Another part of the soft bait is simultaneously or later drawn onto the hook point to shield it from underwater weeds or branches.
The prior art also describes the use of live baits such as small fish, insects, and crustaceans arranged and presented on a fishing hook in a manner similar to that for soft baits. This is not surprising, as the range of soft baits includes forms intended to mimic live baits. A third category of temporary baits intended for securing to a fishing hook for use as baits are the structured soft baits such as fish eggs or pelletized mixtures intended to attract fish and the malleable baits such as Powerbait®, cheese and similar dough-like products.
The attraction to temporary baits such as soft baits, live baits and malleable baits is their effectiveness. The texture of the materials is similar to that which a fish will have experienced in consuming its regular diet items. Sport fish often sample or nibble at a bait or lure before attempting to swallow it. The clear problem with soft baits is that they are easily lost through one or more false strikes by fish.
A fish by way of combined visual, nibble texture, and scent impressions has a vague impression that an object presented to it is something edible and responds to that overall impression. A visual component of the overall impression is well known to be a combined shape and movement of a potential food object in the water whose actions are within the range which the fish has become conditioned to expect such food objects. Water temperature, depth, turbidity, and currents are among the considerations for a fish approaching a food object. Rigid lures and baits are more difficult to present in those conditions as appearing to be the food object expected by a fish. At the same time, current strength and carried materials can negatively affect the presentation of a temporary bait. It is known that the motion of a lure through an area of water where food objects are to be expected by the fish, whether rigid or having a temporary bait, may be more important to attracting the fish than the shape of the lure itself.
Perhaps even more important to the maintenance of a temporary bait in a manner desired by the user are underwater obstacles fixed to the ground and which project upward from it. Those underwater obstacles are the best environment for most fish, providing cover from which to hide from its own predators but also to find smaller food creatures attempting to hide from the fish.
Therein lies a problem for which the prior art contains many attempted solutions. A hook must be used to catch a fish but can also as easily hook many underwater obstacles. Substantially engaging an underwater obstacle, if the engagement does not remove a temporary bait from the hook, can impair its presentation and movement through the water sufficiently to require its replacement. Fishing includes the expectation that many temporary baits may have to be lost to underwater obstacles to catch a single fish. Snag avoidance in the face of mounting loss of temporary baits and hooks will cause the fisherman to change from a desired area to a less desirable one with fewer underwater obstacles. Underwater obstacles comprise weeds, rocks, branches, and other underwater objects.
In a prior art arrangement intended to reduce loss of long, soft baits, the Texas rig uses a bullet shaped sinker located on the fishing line above the eye of the hook to which the line is tied. The hook's point is inserted in the top of the soft bait and then allow to exit some small distance further down. The top of the soft bait is moved up the hook shank until it covers the hook eyelet and knot. The exposed point of the hook is then reinserted into the soft bait at a point further down the body without being allowed to protrude. The rig provides some degree of resistance to snagging since the barbed point of the hook is not exposed and generally would not become hung up on any underwater objects. In this rig, the weight can slide back and forth freely. U.S. Pat. No. 5,832,655 discloses a fishing hook which uses an intervening bullet shaped sinker weight between the eye of the hook and the fishing line. The sinker weight is adapted to fit snugly over the top end of a soft bait worm and so to avoid abrasion and water flow which would tend to dislodge the leading end of a soft bait having a similar top end. When fishing line tension is released underwater, the bullet shaped sinker weight draws the front end of the weight downward with the effective connection to the fishing line. A user pulling on the fishing line must effectively draw upward a longer rigid structure than the hook alone. The overall structure includes the snug fitting sinker weight. In a dense area of underwater obstacles, the additional rigid structure length will cause the structure to encounter more obstacles.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,965,606, similar to the '655 patent, discloses a sinker weight at the terminal end of an overall structure lengthened by the sinker weight and a flexible intervening section. For the same reason that the extended overall length will encounter more underwater obstacles than the hook alone, the device of the '606 patent will fail its snag avoidance purpose as will that of the '655 patent.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,415,793 also suffers from the lengthened overall structure of the combined hook and sinker weight in substantially the same way as that of the '655 and '606 patents. This extended length is antithetical to the requirements of compactness required in dense areas of weeds, reeds or woody stems where fish feel safest and tend to find much prey. The device of the '793 patent teaches away from compactness of a device the size of the hook alone in areas of dense underwater obstacles. A prior art hook and sinker weight combination is widely used where a sinker weight has two generally opposite wire connector loops, one for connecting to the eye of a fishing hook and one to the end of the fishing line. This combination also results in the undesirable lengthened overall structure of the '793 patent.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,744,168 provides a sinker weight in the shape of a prey head but simply reproducing the well known Texas rig described above. The teaching of the above hooks with sinker weight combinations are to extend the overall effective forward drawn length of the combination.
US Patent Publication 2004/0261312 A1 describes the well-known bottom finding rig or Pilchard rig, where a fishing line directly connected to a single hook's eye with no intervening structure to the line to be pulled by a user. A sinker weight is attached to a long connector line and to the hook's eye. In this way, the hook can be brought near to but not down to the ground level. It is intended to avoid bringing the hook into the densest zone of underwater obstacles at the bottom of the body of water, instead allowing the hook to be maintained and a measured level above the dense underwater obstacles. This bottom finding rig is not intended, as are the hook and sinker weight combinations with lengthened overall structures, to be drawn through the densest or bottom zones of underwater obstacles. Clearly, the bottom finding rig doubles the chance that the entire assembly or a hook at the end of one line and the weight at the end of the other line will encounter an underwater obstacle where one of those will be snagged, resulting in a loss of the hook, bait, and sinker weight. One skilled in the art will look to the bottom finding rig as a way to stay out of a dense zone of underwater obstacles, not to enter one voluntarily.
There is a need for a fishing hook and sinker weight combination which eliminates the lengthened structure of the prior art for use in the densest zones of underwater obstacles.